March 23, 2019

The workshop was held at the Smart Data Forum (SDF) showroom in Berlin Charlottenburg. An audience of about 70 people came to hear four insightful presentations on data processing and machine learning.

2-Jul-2018 until 6-Jul-2018

BBDC and ScaDS Dresden/Leipzig are organizing the fourth international big data summer school in its series (former events: 2016, 2017). We offer inspiring insights into the diverse fields of big data by selected keynotes from international experts combined with possibilities for practical sessions. The practical sessions start with a Hackathon prior to the actual school start and will be continued during the week in the tutorial-styled sessions.

The Berlin Big Data Center held its first Symposium on November 8th at the Smart Data Forum, located in Berlin. At this event, members of the BBDC presented the project’s interim results from two years of research.

Big data is often defined as any data set that cannot be handled using today’s widely available mainstream techniques and technologies. The challenges of handling big data are often described using 3-Vs (volume, variety and velocity): high volume of data from a variety of data sources arriving with high velocity analysed to achieve an economic benefit. However, the 3-Vs fail to reflect complexity of “Big Data” in its entirety.

According to the Harvard Business Review, Data Scientist is “The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century”. Data scientists are often considered to be wizards that deliver value from big data. These wizards need to have knowledge in three very distinct subject areas, namely, scalable data management, data analysis and domain area expertise. However, it is a challenge to find these jacks-of-all-trades that cover all three areas. Or, as the Wall Street Journal puts it “Big Data’s Problem is Little Talent”. Naturally, finding talented data scientists is also a requirement, if we are to put big data to good use. If data analysis were specified using a declarative language, data scientists would not have to worry about low-level programming any longer. Instead, they would be free to concentrate on their data analysis problem. The goal of the Berlin Big Data Center is to help bridge the Talent Gap of Big Data through researching and developing novel technology.